Review by Mark Hume with Photography by Travis Lowe Travis Lowe’s new film, Thai One On, isn’t like any fly fishing trip you’ve ever been on before. Unless, that is, taking part in ritual sacrifices, eating giant cockroaches and riding elephants into the seething jungle are part of your normal angling experience. “I guess the thing I set out to do was to make a film that was completely different than anything else that was out there,” Travis said recently when I asked him about the narrative arc he’d chosen for this story He wanted something that stood out in a field cluttered with too much ‘fish porn’. And boy, did he succeed. Thai One On follows three anglers from the Montana Fly Company, who set out to catch the mighty Mahseer, a kind of super carp, in the Mae Ngao, or River of Reflection, in northern Thailand. At first they are just thinking how much fun it will be, but pretty soon they find themselves working with local Karen villagers around Chiang Mai, to protect a dwindling species. The guys from Montana bring to impoverished third world villagers a modern conservation ethic, and the promise of a sports angling economy based on the alien concept of a catch-and-release fishery. In return they get enlightenment – and learn how to put a fatal curse on poachers by cutting the head off a rooster. During the journey they not only fall in love with the Mahseer, and its explosive surface strikes, but also with the Thai people and their rich culture. They also get so desperate to crack the Mahseer, that they throw everything at them – including the aptly named Cherry Bomb, and in one great sequence, the dangly bits from a restaurant table...

Interview by Mark Hume with Photography by Kris Keller and Travis Lowe Travis Lowe, a television news cameraman based in Kelowna, British Columbia, is one of the emerging film-makers who is pushing the fly fishing genre in new directions. His latest work, Thai One On, reviewed elsewhere on this site, is featured in the 2013 F3T Film Festival, which is touring 150 cities in North America. It is a multi-layered story about the journey three anglers from the Montana Fly Company make in pursuit of the mighty Mahseer, in the jungles of northern Thailand. It’s either that, or a story about how they survive Bangkok, learn how to tie the Cherry Bomb, and get schooled in the art of voodoo witchcraft. Either way, it is one heck of a yarn. In this Q & A with Mark Hume, editor of ariverneversleeps.com, Travis talks about the making of Thai One On and his philosophy about truthful, dramatic documentaries that have real stories to tell. Q: Tell me about the film competition. A: F3T. There are three film competitions in the world. F3T is the first one, based out of Boulder, Colorado. It does 150 dates across the U.S. and Canada throughout the year. It will be viewed by 40,000 people or so. It’s a competition that goes on every year, of the best films. Q: How do you get in there? A: You apply. They have a deadline in November. They have a screening with a bunch of people and decide which ones will go in. Last year I had a film called Canvas Fish which didn’t make it . . . there wasn’t a lot of fishing in that film. It was about an artist . . . but they really liked the film...